JAN. 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia’s VimpelCom said that it was prepared to pay a $600m for bribes it paid in Uzbekistan to gain access to mobile phone licences. The row is part of a wider corruption investigation centred around bribes paid by international telecoms companies to gain access to Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 264, published on Jan. 22 2016)
JAN. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azercell, one of the largest telecoms companies in Azerbaijan, said it will lay off 60 workers, around 8% of its employees in the country. Azercell is TeliaSonera’s subsidiary company in Azerbaijan. It said in a statement that the worsening economic conditions in the country are directly affecting the company’s financial health.
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(News report from Issue No. 264, published on Jan. 22 2016)
JAN. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swedish telecoms company TeliaSonera effectively slashed the value of its assets in Uzbekistan by 5.3b Swedish kronor ($622m) to speed up a fire sale of its unit which it considers toxic after it was heavily implicated in a major corruption scandal.
Since last September, TeliaSonera has sought to sell off its businesses in Central Asia and the South Caucasus so that it can concentrate on its core mobile and data services in Europe.
TeliaSonera is under investigation in the Netherlands, Sweden and the US over its acquisition of mobile licenses in Uzbekistan in 2007. Prosecutors say the deal involved paying large bribes to the Uzbek president’s eldest daughter, Gulnara Karimova. Rival Norwegian telecoms company Telenor has also been accused of bribing Uzbek officials.
The cut in value of Teliasonera’s Uzbek assets, which will be booked on its Q4 2015 operations, is part of a 7.2b Swedish kronor ($845m) cut in the company’s global assets.
“We are well on track shaping the new TeliaSonera and the process to reduce our presence in Eurasia continues,” Teliasonera CEO, Johan Dennelind, said in a statement.
“As a consequence of this progress and current status in the overall divestment process, Region Eurasia will be reported as discontinued operations. When doing this we are obliged to change valuation method for these operations. This has resulted in an impairment charge relating to our operations in Uzbekistan.”
In its forthcoming 2015 annual report, due later this month, TeliaSonera will block out results from the Eurasia region and tag it “held for sale”.
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(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)
JAN. 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) -Swedish telecoms company Teliasonera said that it would write $622m off the value of its Uzbek unit that it wants to sell. A corruption scandal has enveloped the Uzbek unit of Teliasonera and it has said that it wants to sell its entire Eurasian operations.
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(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)
DEC. 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government said it has allowed local telecom operators to provide 4G services to their customers . State-owned Kazakhtelecom’s subsidiary Altel had been the only company that could use the 4G network. Other companies may now offer 4G data services, giving a much-needed competitive boost to Kazakhstan’s telecoms sector.
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(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)
JAN. 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The US online streaming service Netflix expanded its operations to 130 new countries, including those former Soviet states of South Caucasus and Central Asia. The expansion will give customers from Armenia to Tajikistan access to popular US TV shows through their internet connection.
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(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)
DEC. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan’s telecommunications ministry said it wanted to spend nearly $900m over the next five years improving broadband access across the country. Internet penetration in Uzbekistan is still low.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
NOV. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian telecoms company VimpelCom could be close to a $775m settlement with a US court that accused it of paying bribes to access mobile licences in Uzbekistan, Bloomberg reported. Earlier in November, the company set aside $900m for settlement costs. VimpelCom representatives declined to comment.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Nar Mobile brand of Azerbaijan’s telecoms company Azerfon said it has expanded 3G and 4G coverage in the country. Kent McNeley, Azerfon’s CEO, said the company has doubled its total network capacity in the past two years. Nar Mobile was awarded a licence to operate LTE networks earlier in February.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkcell, Turkey’s biggest mobile service provider, is planning on buying TeliaSonera’s assets in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, Bloomberg News reported by quoting a source close to the company.
The source said that Turkcell had appointed HSBC and Citigroup to advise it on its potential bid to buy the stake in Fintur from TeliaSonera that it doesn’t already own.
Turkcell owns 41.45% of Rotterdam-based Fintur; TeliaSonera owns the rest. Fintur runs brands in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Moldova with 18m users.
Turkcell CEO, Kaan Terzioglu, appeared to confirm the company’s intention to buy TeliaSonera’s stake in Fintur. Answering journalists’ questions in Istanbul on when a deal would be finished, he said: “in 2016 if all the negotiations go well.”
The deal is important because it moves TeliaSonera towards its stated aim of selling its companies in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. It also owns businesses in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan which it wants to find a buyer for.
Earlier this year, it said that it wanted to sell up after investigations began into a corruption scandal at its Uzbek company. It is alleged to have paid Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, millions of dollars in bribes to gain access to the Uzbek mobile market in 2007/8.
Telenor, its Norwegian rival, is also investigating alleged corruption at its Uzbek subsidiary. It owns a 33% stake in Russia-based Vimpelcom which owns a company in Uzbekistan that also, allegedly paid a bribe to enter the market.
Turkcell is Turkey’s main mobile operator. Its shareholder structure has been argued over since 2011. It has shares listed on the New York and Istanbul stock exchanges but its institutional shareholders include Turkey’s Cukurova Holding, Russia’s AlfaGroup and TeliaSonera.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)
